Fifty Shades of Spray Click - Short Edition

But now on BBC News, it is time for Click.

Graffiti art has been one of the hottest art movements over

the last few decades.

Like many graffiti artists, Graeme - or Xenz, the name he goes by -

cut his teeth on the streets.

In this case, the streets of Bristol.

And he has since grown into the artist that we see

on the roof of his East London studio.

Today, he's taking a break to do this for us.

But he's more known these days for these amazing natural scenes

which are exhibited and sold all over the world,

and which incorporate all of the graffiti techniques that

he's honed over the years.

Yeah, over time you really understand what the can

is about to do.

You know, you come to rely on these tools, like the nozzle or the weight

of the can.

Like the way that I use the edge there to keep one edge sharp and one

edge faded, then this, you know, different lines, adding colours.

So there's a lot of disciplines that go through painting that

are the same here, you know.

Years of practice...

No, we don't have that kind of patience.

So could we pull off something similar to this by combining

technology with someone who has no creative talent whatsoever?

To find out, we sent Nick Kwek to Estonia.

Tartu, Estonia's second-largest city.

Like most cities, graffiti and street art provoke

around every corner.

If you know where to look.

It's also home to one of the biggest spray-painted pieces I've ever

laid eyes on.

But Albert's been painted dot by dot, and I've been promised I too

can achieve artistic genius with the right tools.

Believe it or not, these pictures have all been painted

with spray paint.

They've been pieced together splodge by splodge

by the SprayPrinter device.

My daughter wanted a unicorn on her wall, but I couldn't draw.

So that pushed me towards creating this device.

To make these magical masterpieces you need the right kit -

a smartphone with the appropriate app installed, an external battery

pack to keep it fully juiced, a tripod to hold it steady,

some paint, and of course the SprayPrinter.

First you select an image and align it against the area

you want to paint.

So the image is projected like a giant virtual sticker.

Portraits with shadows work best.

The phone's camera exposes for the LED on the device,

and when it illuminates, it sends the can's location

to the app.

The phone then tells the printer its coordinates

and the printer decides when to spray and when not to.

Once you get the knack of it, it's actually surprisingly

simple to use.

You just have to make sure you go from left to right,

or right to left, very smoothly, in a straight line.

For all its geeky brilliance, it's a real labour of love.

Even the most simple of designs takes several hours.

Depending on how complex the picture, and the size,

the amount of layers, the different colours

you want to paint with, you know, that determines how long doing one

of these is going to take.

You need to move your hand relatively steady, so if you start

moving your hand very quickly you're losing accuracy.

Not sure I could really stand your for several

hours doing this.

With the next model, you should be able to move your hand

relatively freely as you would with a regular paintbrush.

To give your arm rest, the team have already started

developing robotic versions to do the spraying for them,

meaning larger more complex images.

I developed this extra accessory for the SprayPrinter to atomise

the process, because for high scale images the hand-held method takes

too much time and effort.

Soon, others will be able to join in too,

hopefully speeding things up a bit.

But does the printer help artistic expression,

or simply kill it?

A person who can't draw at all, this gives like guidelines

of how to paint.

It's like sort of a colouring book, but you can go over the lines,

but the paint will still only land in the right places.

I think for people like myself, we call them artistically

challenged...

LAUGHTER

And I think this device gives them new power.

The finished result?

It started off only a few small dots.

You actually have to stand back a few feet to get the full view,

to get the right perspective on it.

How good is that?

Yeah, and in true Blue Peter fashion, here's one I made earlier.

Yeah, all me.

Entirely done by me.

All of it.

Well, that was Nick Kwek with the SprayPrinter.

Graeme, worried?

Not really, no.

I mean it's a great tool.

It works like a projector.

It helps us to get these large images up easier but no,

I think I'm quite comfortable in what I'm doing right now.

I might use it one day though.

It definitely has its advantages, for sure, yeah.

One of the brilliant things about working on Click

is that we all get to achieve our lifetime ambitions at one point

or another, which is why this week Mark Cieslak became the captain

of a starship!

He took some of the rest of the Click family with him,

to boldly go where no Mark has gone before.

Space, the final frontier.

These are the virtual voyages of the BBC Click team.

Our mission: To wear VR headsets and discover strange,

new technology, and boldly go where no TV reporter

has gone before.

Virtual reality game Star Trek Bridge Crew brings

together up to four players, each taking a different role

on the bridge of a starship.

The beauty of going where no one has gone before is that starship travel

involves an awful lot of sitting down.

Sitting down is great for virtual reality because the headsets have

got these cables.

If you're moving around it easy to get caught up with them.

Sitting avoids all of that.

And where better to be sitting than the Captain's chair

of a Federation starship?

Headsets on, it's time for the Click team to become a starship crew.

Wow.

It's really strange.

That's brilliant.

Incredible.

Oh, my goodness, Mark!

Hi.

I'm dabbing.

All right, people?

Let's trek some stars.

The early missions are all about orientating us was the bridge

and how we interact with it.

As helmsman, you are the ship's navigator.

The headset shows us what the bridge looks like,

but the PlayStation motion controllers allow us to interact

with the various controls we have to master in order to fly the ship.

Help.

Yes?

Walk course to gamma hydra.

Engage.

Oh, we're warping, everybody.

Oh!

Wow.

That's pretty, isn't it?

That's good.

Wow.

We don't have time for sight seeing, though, as we receive a distress

signal from a stricken vessel.

My vessel has lost all power and our life-support systems

are nearly exhausted.

Here we go.

Scanning now.

Get on that scan.

OK, so, engineering?

Yes.

Can you transport the survivors to here?

I don't know.

CHUCKLES

That wasn't in the training.

LAUGHTER

We're homing in at an alarming rate,

Captain.

There are no options within transporter.

It says right there in the list.

Transport, energise.

It's at this moment that the action takes a turn which will appeal

to Star Trek super fans.

OK, guys, this is the Kobayashi Maru scenario.

This is an impossible to win situation.

Oh!

It's a D51 cruiser.

It's a Klingon D5 cruiser?

Yes.

OK.

Target it.

Bring it about so we can actually see that the vessel.

Bring it in behind it.

Come on!

West, West, West.

Turn it, turn it, turn it.

Find us.

Find us.

Operating.

There it is.

OK, bring in those torpedoes.

Line up the phasers, and torpedoes away.

Get us back behind it.

Target destroyed.

Oh!

Yeah, everybody, we just violated a peace treaty.

Wow.

Oh, wow.

It's pretty warm work being in virtual reality.

It feels like it's social VR at its best, really.

Communication's a must.

If you don't have it you're not going to complete the mission.

Great for team building.

I thought we actually had our lives on the line for a minute.

That ably demonstrates the power of teamwork.

It's really, really important that everybody plays their role

on the bridge, because if you don't then chaos ensues.

We had a couple of sticky moments there, but I think we managed

to pull it back and keep it together as a crew.

And the result was a successful mission.

Brilliant.

That was Mark and the crew.

That's it for this week.

Follow us on Twitter at BBC Click.

Or like us on Facebook, too, where you can see lots of extra

content and videos.

Now, while you're watching this we are doing a live show

at the Hay Literary Festival in Wales.

And next week on the programme you can see a little bit

of what we're getting up to.

Can't wait.

And if you're coming, I hope you enjoy the festival.

And we will see you next week.